


enjoy your youth (sounds like a threat)

by tacoboutfabulous



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Light Angst, Pre-Canon, Rain, because barrett sucks, canon-typical rooftop musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-21
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-26 19:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30111204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacoboutfabulous/pseuds/tacoboutfabulous
Summary: There is a dress draped over Sasha’s bed, and she doesn't want it.
Relationships: Eldarion & Sasha Racket
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	enjoy your youth (sounds like a threat)

**Author's Note:**

> rqg brainrot + a love of sasha racket + google docs = this monstrosity!! first fic in the fandom and it is so very self-indulgent but i really enjoyed writing it so i hope you enjoy!
> 
> Title is from Older and Taller by Regina Spektor, my love.

There is a dress draped over Sasha’s bed, and she doesn't want it. She doesn’t want to wear it, she doesn’t want to look at it. The rain is pouring outside and she stares through the window at the clouds and the dour weather, forehead against the glass and arms drawn tight around herself.

She doesn’t look at the dress because maybe, if she doesn’t look at it, it will disappear.

She closes her eyes. Opens them. Peeks over her shoulder.

The dress is still there.

Sasha turns back around. Thunder rumbles in the distance, enough to shake the ground, just a little, but she does not jump. 

The dress is pink. Light, baby pink. It’s got layers and rumples and everything she sees on the girls in the courtyard, with their pinned hair and long skirts.

Apparently, this dress is hers now. But looking at the frills and the puffy sleeves and the _color_ —no, this is not Sasha’s. It’s not supposed to _be_ hers. This isn’t the kind of the thing she would own, not what she would wear. Sasha doesn’t like pink, doesn’t like lace.

This dress isn’t Sasha’s.

But Eldarion thinks it’s hers. She had set it on Sasha’s bed with a tepid smile and an affirmation that dinner would be held soon, that she would call Sasha down when it was time, that some _very_ pertinent people would be present so she should be on her best behavior, that Sasha ought to put on that dress and run a comb through that hair of hers—that’s why it’s always so tangled, because she never brushes it—that Eldarion would help her with the pins if needed, that hiding daggers in her sleeves would not work, not this time, and that Eldarion would ensure she didn’t try.

Sasha thinks to the blade beneath the mattress—nicked during a breakfast where Eldarion had not been watching Sasha as closely as she should have been—and wonders if Eldarion knows it’s there.

Again, she looks over to the bed. The dress has not moved. How long has it been there? How long has _she_ been here, curled up on the window seat, watching the rain absently? How long ago had Eldarion come by? When would she be back?

The world must hate her, because the moment that last thought has crossed her mind there is a light knock at the door and Sasha sets her jaw. The door creaks open. Someone sighs. Sasha draws her shoulders high and, resolutely, does not do anything.

“Sasha,” comes a voice. “Really?”

Eldarion is exasperated, surely. She sounds like it, and probably looks like it, too, but Sasha does not move from her spot.

Eldarion’s heels click across the floorboards as she walks further into the room. “You’re going to be late for dinner,” she says, and her tone might have been properly chastising, had Sasha not heard those same words a hundred times before. “We’ve talked about this.”

Still, Sasha is silent. The raindrops that run down the window are racing each other. She has her bets on the one on the right—it’s going faster, quicker. More speed. It’s going to beat the left raindrop easy.

There is a beat.

“I’ll help you get dressed,” Eldarion says.

At last, Sasha turns around. “No,” she says.

And she was right—Eldarion _is_ exasperated. She’s rubbing the space between her eyebrows like she always does when Sasha is like this. Her clothes are wet. From the rain, probably. “Sasha, really—”

“‘S not _mine.”_

“It is,” Eldarion tells her patiently. Or, maybe, impatiently. But if she really is impatient with Sasha, she does a good job of hiding it. “I sent it to the tailor’s yesterday. It should fit you perfectly.”

“I don’t—” The words stick. Sasha turns back around, folding her arms. She tries to find the right raindrop, the one she knew was going to win, but she can’t see it anymore. They all look the same, a window watercolor. “I don’t wanna wear it.”

“All ladies your age wear dresses like these.”

Sasha’s face twists. She can only hope Eldarion can’t see it. “I’m not a _lady,”_ she says emphatically.

“You will be. Here.” Eldarion appears beside her, the dress in her hands. She probably expects Sasha to take it—her arms are extended, an invitation—but Sasha does nothing of the sort. She doesn’t throw the dress to the ground; she isn’t a _child._ But she tears away from the window seat and crosses to the other side of the room, leaving Eldarion alone with the dress.

See, the thing about Sasha is that she’s _fast._ All good thieves are. You’ve got to be fast to not get stabbed, and you’ve got to be fast to stab _good._

And she thinks that sometimes, Eldarion forgets that.

Sasha tries not to smile.

There is a beat.

“Sasha,” Eldarion says again, and aren’t there so many ways to say her name? Angry, tired, upset, condescending—Sasha reckons she’s heard all of them at one point or another. How many times will her name be said today? She ought to start a tally. “You will go to dinner, and you will wear this dress. Sit down.”

Sasha does not sit down.

She has no intentions of attending dinner, nor does she plan on donning the dress.

So Sasha Racket does what Sasha Racket does best.

Run.

And, see, it’s hard to run in skirts like these—you trip a lot, because they’re so long—but Sasha hikes up the fabric and runs. She elbows the door to her room out of her way and makes sure it clicks shut before she books it down the hall. She’s on the top floor, she knows that much. An insurance, Rakefine probably thought, because no one in their right mind would jump out of a window at such a height, but Sasha has been jumping out of windows since her legs were long enough and she’s not out of practice now. Besides, Other London kids know their way around walls and it’s really stupid to think otherwise.

There’s a door at the end of the hallway. She isn’t sure where it leads, and it’s not exactly a window, but she shoves it open anyway. At this point, Sasha realizes she doesn’t care about where she’s going. All that matters is getting out, out, out.

The door opens, and she is met with a ladder. The sound of rain above is maddening. A drop of water hits the top of her head and she glances up, frowning. There’s a trap door, the hinges rusted. Does this lead to the roof?

She hasn’t been on a roof in a very long time.

Sasha looks over her shoulder. Eldarion is at the far end of the corridor, her glare enough to sear glass. She’s fast, too. Sasha will give her that much, but Eldarion is in heels and Sasha… is only wearing socks. It’s only natural that she’s quicker.

Sasha toes the door shut with her heel and scrambles up the ladder.

The ladder _does_ lead to the roof. The second she sticks her head up and tastes the bitter air of a thunderstorm, she is soaked in rain. The wind whips around her, sending her hair all over the place. Sasha holds it back with one hand while her other fumbles, trying to shut the trap door again. Somewhere thunder is rumbling and it’s so loud up here but strangely welcome, because Other London was always noisy, and Upper London likes to be quiet. Still.

Sasha isn’t used to quiet. Not used to still.

With a _click,_ the trap door slides back into place, and Sasha is left with the rooftop. And the rain. And the omnipresent threat of Eldarion beneath her, quick as she can be in a pair of high heels and an evening gown.

But Sasha isn’t paying attention to that now. She’s paying attention to her socks, mostly, because she hadn’t remembered that rain makes puddles and puddles make things wet and her feet are currently in the culmination of many puddles.

She steps away, kicking the water as she goes, and finds the edge of the rooftop. It’s fenced in, all cutesy white paint. Everything about Rakefine’s estate is _cutesy._ You wouldn’t guess it by looking at his face, but the man seems to adore swirls and shapes. The architecture is so foreign to her it’s dizzying, sometimes. Really, it feels like less of a house and more like those dollhouses she’s seen in the shop windows, plastic and shuttered.

But there are a lot of chimneys up here, black with soot, and one of them is right beside the fence, so Sasha sinks down against it. The chill of the bricks seeps into her back, biting like a dog.

She wonders if Eldarion can run in the rain.

It isn’t peaceful up here. Not now, not in the rain—the thunder is deafening and it shakes the ground sometimes, like someone took Upper London by the ankles and waved it all around. Her socks feel gross, and she peels them off with a grimace. They hit the ground with two plops. Her hair is sodden, too; limp against her shoulders.

“How unbefitting of a lady,” Eldarion says in her head.

Sasha pushes her hair out of her eyes and rests her head on her hands.

She’s cold, and the weather is doing her no favors, but it’s a welcome feeling from the stifling heat of the estate.

She draws her knees to her chest and stays there, staring at the sky. She doesn’t cry—and she doesn’t _want_ to cry—but her eyes sting anyway and she rubs at them roughly with the back of her hand.

She hates it here.

She _hates_ it here.

Other London might be bad but at least it wasn’t like _this._ And she isn’t very sure what “this” is—not really—but either way, she doesn't like it.

Sasha realizes, belatedly, that she feels more at home here, freezing in the rain and looking very much like the street rat she is, on the roof of an Upper London estate, than inside the building beneath her at all.

It’s an odd conclusion to come to, certainly, but it makes sense.

Sasha knows the cold, the damp. It can’t rain in Other London but it gets frigid in winter and there’s always a leaky ceiling, drip, drip, dripping onto the concrete.

She’s used to _that._

But she isn’t used to— _this._ Whatever _this_ is. Sasha isn’t used to making conversation and using knives only to cut pieces of lamb; she’s not used to braided hair and writing until her fingers ache.

Because that’s not who she is. Sasha isn’t supposed to be here. She isn’t meant to be here.

It doesn’t matter much what she thinks, though. Does it even matter much at all?

She’s tried to run before, but she was always dragged back. Told to “stop being so difficult, really” and that she’s “only causing more trouble for herself.”

There is a creak.

Sasha flinches in a way that she hates, but does not turn around.

Eldarion is behind her; Sasha knows that for certain. Eldarion is good at that sort of thing—at pretending to be invisible even though she could never come close to it.

Sasha looks down at herself. Her day clothes are sodden with rain. Not so perfect now. She thinks of Eldarion’s evening gown, the rings on her fingers and the pieces of gold in her ears. She must be a sore sight now; the rain doesn’t spare anyone. Are they both going to attend dinner looking like drowned rats?

Sasha is not alone, not anymore, but it’s still nice to think that she is, that she’s somewhere else. Not Other London—there’s no sky in Other London. But somewhere better than this, better than these _rules_ and _lessons_ and skirts that chafe and blouses that itch.

But try as she might, she can’t think of a place like that. She’s only ever been in one London or the other.

 _Is_ there even a place like that?

Sasha doesn’t know.

She remembers being so in awe of the rain when she first left Other London. That the clouds got so heavy that they could just— _fall._ That lightning lit up the night like a match to wood and that thunder wasn’t nearly as bad above ground as it was below.

She’s gotten used to it all now. It’s just—water, really. That’s all rain is. It makes the worms come up from the dirt and people slip in puddles. Sometimes the gardens flood, and she likes watching the gardeners putter around frantically, doing whatever gardeners do to a garden when it rains. When it rains a _lot,_ it falls down the sides of the estate like a curtain, and she always wonders how it would feel if she put her hand through it.

But apart from that, rain is just… water.

Her hair is wet now. Sasha holds her arms closer.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” Eldarion says.

Sasha doesn’t say anything. Around them, the rain continues to pour. She almost leans over the fence to look down—is the water curtain there today? It’s raining hard enough for it to be. Maybe—

“Ladies don’t climb roofs, Sasha. We’ve talked about this.”

Sasha’s tone is biting. “It’s like I told you. I’m not a _lady.”_

“Well, you certainly aren’t now,” Eldarion says crossly. She gestures to Sasha. “Look at yourself. You’re soaking wet. We need to get you downstairs if we want your hair to dry by the time dinner starts.”

“You won’t need to,” Sasha snaps, turning away, “‘cause I’m not going.”

“Sasha—”

“I’m not going. You can’t make me.”

Eldarion purses her lips. “I assure you, I absolutely can.”

“How?” Sasha yells. _“How?_ By—by pulling me away again? Takin’ me by the ear like I’m some sorta kid?” She gets to her feet here, her fists white-knuckled at her sides. Eldarion’s eyes are trained on her, and they pierce like blades. Sasha’s feet are so cold, but it’s no chill she hasn’t felt before. She grits her teeth. “I don’t even wanna be here. I don’t even _like_ you.”

Sasha means for the words to sting—and if she was in Other London, they might have—but the people here like to wear faces and Eldarion is just the same. The only hint she gets that Eldarion might be mad at her is the way her painted lips twist. The rest of her skin remains smooth, unhindered.

Sasha glowers.

“Yes, I’m sure you don’t,” Eldarion says with another long-suffering sigh. She extends a hand. “Come along, Sasha. We really don’t have any time.”

“No.” She sinks back down against the chimney and folds her arms across her chest. A raindrop hits her square in the eye and she rubs at it angrily. “I’m not going.”

“Sasha, really—”

“No.”

_“Sasha.”_

Sasha is starting to feel like a child. Eldarion has said her name five times in the last two minutes and she is sure the number will only climb. “I don’t wanna.”

“What is so wrong with going to dinner?” Eldarion says, and she’s started to get an edge in her voice. “It’s nothing you haven’t done before. There will just be more people than you’re used to, that’s all. It’s just dinner.”

“‘S not _dinner,”_ Sasha mumbles.

“Then _what_ is it?”

Sasha waves her hands around. “This!”

Lightning splits the sky. All of a sudden, the wind picks up, and her hair catches in her mouth. She spits, sullenly.

But it’s over as soon as it’s come, and the two of them are still on the rooftop. Sasha is still cold. Eldarion is still upset at her.

“You’ll forgive me for not understanding,” Eldarion says dryly.

“You,” Sasha says, pointing, “a-and this _dinner_ thing, and Rakefine and his big stupid house, and that dumb dress!”

“I really thought you might like it,” Eldarion says, and she sounds almost sad.

“I _don’t,”_ Sasha snaps, setting her jaw. “‘Cause it isn’t mine. How—how ‘m I gonna like something if it’s not even my own?”

Eldarion rubs the space between her eyebrows. “We’ve been over this, Sasha. I promise, it’s yours.”

“But I don’t wear things like that! No one in Other London does! It can’t be mine if it’s—if it’s something like _that.”_ She glares. “’S just you dumb posh people, everyone up here. Nobody wears dresses in Other London.”

“You aren’t in—you aren’t down there anymore, Sasha. Of course people will wear different things.”

“They wear smart things in Other London,” Sasha goes on. “Better things than—these.” She kicks out her legs. The skirt is still stuck to them, soaked by the rain. “Layers are what get you dead. How are you supposed to run in stuff like this?”

The curl of Eldarion’s lip might be amused. “You seemed to manage just fine earlier.”

Sasha falters. “Well—well, that’s just ‘cause I can run fast already. I just had to—”

“When you first came here, do you want to know what you were wearing?”

Sasha doesn’t need Eldarion to tell her, because she remembers just fine—a pair of trousers that used to be Brock’s, a shirt that didn’t fit right, a belt so worn you couldn’t tell where the holes were anymore, socks that didn’t match, and a pair of boots that she’d had for years. The sole of the left boot had peeled off at least three times but she always stuck it back down with whatever she could find and hoped for the best.

And her favorite: a leather jacket, the sleeves soft and broken in, and the spikes on the shoulders sharp enough to prick someone if she was in a pinch.

And the clothes—well. Maybe they weren’t the greatest. Nobody in Upper London wears clothes like she used to. The trousers don’t have cut-up hems and the white shirts are actually white, not soiled. They’re cleaner, more kept up.

But the outfit she wore when she first walked through Upper London was hers. Her pants, her shirt, her shoes.

They were _hers._

She looks down at herself and sees nothing of her own.

What did they do with her other clothes?

Sasha sets her jaw.

“—and the _dirt._ It looked like you had been bathed in it, really. Even the—”

“I saw it,” Sasha snaps, cutting Eldarion off. She almost has to shout over the thunder. “I _know_ what I looked like. You don’t have to tell me. I know.”

“Well,” Eldarion says, and something Sasha said must have cracked her pretty-person facade, because there is upset leaking through her voice, “if you know that, then you should understand why it’s so important for you to dress nicely now.”

Glaring, Sasha asks, “And why’s that?”

“Because you aren’t in Other London anymore,” Eldarion replies, emphatic. “There’s no reason for you to dress like that. Not up here.”

“But that’s the thing. I don’t wanna dress like—whatever you people dress like.” Morosely, Sasha folds her arms across her chest. “Really, I haven’t—I haven’t wanted to do a lot of things up here. Did you know that? All these people I didn’t wanna meet, these places I didn’t wanna go—you say that up here’s so much nicer than down in Other London but you’ve never even _been_ in Other London. You wouldn’t _know.”_

“Surely it’s better up here.”

Sasha thinks of the ring on her finger and the grime that used to be underneath her nails and the feeling of Barrett’s hand on her shoulder.

And the things she tries not to remember. The nights spent sobbing and the ugly black of bruises on her legs from mistakes she’d learned not to make, blood that won’t get out of carpets and the sound bone makes as it splits—

But then she thinks of Brock and eels and running across rooftops at night. His hand, warm in her own and practicing cartwheels when Barrett was away. A piece of stale bread shared behind thin walls and the smiles they exchanged when it tasted _sweet._

The books and tests and lessons of the weeks past come to mind. Briefly, Sasha flexes her hands, and stares at the calluses there—some older, from daggers and hilts, and the newest: an ugly thing on her right middle finger, born after hours and hours of nothing but _writing._

Sasha presses her lips together.

“No,” she says, after a moment, “no, ‘s worse here than it ever was down there.”

Strangely, Eldarion looks troubled at this. “How?”

“‘Least I got to _do_ stuff down there,” Sasha mumbles. She points, uselessly, to the ground. Thunder shakes the earth and she grinds her teeth together. “They—they let me _do_ things, y’know? I got to do stuff—maybe I didn’t wanna most of the time but they let me at least go out when I wanted. But you lot _don’t._ You just—you just tell me to _sit_ a-and look _nice_ and learn words all day in the same dumb room. I can’t even open the _window._ Not even just to look out of.”

And we didn’t really _have_ windows worth looking out of in Other London, she thinks, but does not say.

“I think ‘learning words all day’ is normally just called getting an education,” Eldarion says.

Pointedly, Sasha looks away. “I don’t like it.”

“Did they teach you?”

Sasha starts, turning to Eldarion with a puzzled expression. And Eldarion… she looks almost considering. Really, it’s a scary face for her to make. Has she ever looked this way? Sasha’s shoulders rise. “What?”

“In Other London,” Eldarion goes on. “Did they teach you things?”

“Like what?”

“Like reading and writing and maths.”

Sasha thinks.

And thinks.

And thinks some more.

“I know how to stab someone in good spots,” she informs Eldarion after a little bit. The latter’s face does a twisty thing at that. Sasha hastens to elaborate. “Like—the places where they bleed most. How to keep ‘em from getting back up. And—”

“But did you have schools?” Eldarion presses. “Teachers?”

“W-well, we didn’t need ‘em,” Sasha says. The rain has not let up and she’s started to shiver in the seconds turned minutes they’ve been talking; all the adrenaline from running has worn away, and now Sasha is just cold and tired. She blames the stutter on the chill—even Eldarion looks rough. Her makeup has begun to run, her eyeliner black down her cheeks.

She isn’t crying. Sasha doesn’t think she is, anyway—Eldarion doesn’t _cry—_ but if the lighting was different, she looks like she might be.

Looking away, Sasha pulls her knees tighter to her chest. Her skirt sticks to her legs.

Thunder rumbles.

“You just… you just pick things up,” she continues in a quieter voice. “Over time. Don’t need teachers when you’ve got people who know things.”

“What were you taught, then?”

“Stabbing, mostly,” Sasha says, after a moment of thought. “And where to—not go. Places where people talk. What your name looks like. The best way to cook an eel. I know that well. It’s dead easy, really—I thought it would be a lot harder but all you gotta do is—”

“What about more… scholarly things?” Eldarion asks, interrupting her.

Sasha hesitates.

“I knew—I know numbers. And my name. ‘M not _stupid,”_ she adds when Eldarion’s eyebrow raises.

“I didn’t say you were,” she says.

“I know numbers,” Sasha repeats. “And my name. That’s enough.”

Eldarion sighs. “In... Other London—” and she says the name like it hurts her, “—perhaps. But not here. That’s why you’ve been brought to Rakefine, Sasha. Education. So that you can know more than numbers and your name.”

“Nobody asked me if I wanted to.”

There is a beat.

Sasha is so cold. When she looks in her lap, her hands are shaking.

“Sometimes people don’t do that,” Eldarion says, after a moment. “But—”

“They should’ve,” Sasha says, and her words are spoken with the same viscosity that Eldarion uses to talk about Other London. “They should’ve asked me.”

Eldarion is quiet. Then, “Would you have come here if you’d been asked?”

Sasha almost laughs. Her throat feels tight. “No,” she says blithely. “I wouldn’t’ve.”

And it is no ending, but they remain there a while longer. The rain falls around them in torrents but Sasha stays where she is, and Eldarion does the same.

It is cold and windy and bitter but it is so _different_ to be able to sit on a rooftop that Sasha doesn’t move, doesn’t get up.

She just stares down at the courtyard, at the dots of light down the streets, at the gardens, at the sky above and the ground below.

When was the last time she seemed so tall? When was the last time she stood atop a roof?

(Brock would’ve been with her, probably. And it would’ve been the thick of summer, and they didn’t quite know that heat rose so they would’ve clambered higher and higher until when they stood their heads nearly touched the ceiling. And they would smile at that, at reaching the ceiling of Other London, at being so very large and so very small at the same time, at the way the people beneath them looked more like ants than any humans they knew. And their shins would be bruised and their faces would be grimy but for that one moment it would be only them. Just her and Brock and a set of red dice rolled out on a tin rooftop. Brock’s face when she realized she was cheating and the laughter they shared when she admitted it.)

When was the last time she felt like this?

She can’t remember.

It feels like Sasha doesn’t do anything for hours, but soon, Eldarion appears beside her, a hand extended. Her dress billows in the wind.

“We have just under half an hour,” she tells Sasha. It is no greeting, but you come to expect that with Eldarion. “I don’t know if your hair will dry, but we can at least get you warm.”

And Sasha almost laughs again—at caring so much that your hair isn’t wet, of all things—but she’s freezing and being up here as long as she has is doing her no favors.

So, shelving her pride, she takes Eldarion’s hand.

And Eldarion says nothing about it. There is no remark, no quip. She helps Sasha to her feet and is silent when Sasha draws her hand away just as quickly. She might be cold but she is not desperate and makes sure that is clear.

But when she looks, Eldarion is wearing her mask again. They climb down the ladder with no other words exchanged but, “Watch your step.”

Outside, the rain pours.

Later, after Sasha is rid of her rain-sodden clothes and she is toweled dry of the chill, she finds herself in a corridor. A mirror is in front of her face, but she does not look. She does not want to look.

Because maybe, just maybe, if she does not look at what she has been made into, then she won’t be anything at all.

The sleeves of the dress—pink like bubblegum but nowhere near the softness—itch.

Her hair is pinned back, the front pieces curled. The clips are “pretty.” Eldarion tells Sasha they’re “pretty”—which really just means that they’d be worth a lot back home. They look like gold and glisten when the light from the candles hits them just right.

(Her hair still isn’t entirely dry. Sasha relishes in this fact.)

“Come along,” Eldarion says lightly, pushing the door to the dining hall open. The sound of soft chatter wafts into the corridor in which they stand; the clink of utensils against porcelain, a glass as it’s set down on the table. The noises are grating. “They’re waiting for us.”

Sasha is silent, and for a moment, she nearly misses the rooftop. Nearly misses the feeling of rain on her head and brick against her back. Even the chill—the sort that stabs at your fingers and toes.

Maybe it wasn’t the best weather, maybe it made her cold and miserable and _tired,_ but it’s still better than this.

Whatever _this_ is.

Eldarion takes her by the shoulder. It could be a kind gesture—and if her hands were different, if they were softer and nicer, it might have been—but Eldarion’s nails are filed to a point and her grip is like steel.

Barrett’s hand felt just the same.

Together, they enter the dining hall. Eldarion’s fingers dig into Sasha’s shoulder. There will be moons in her skin soon.

She longs for stars instead.

As they do, the conversation dips, and a hush seems to wash over the room. Behind them, the doors click shut, and Sasha stumbles to a halt. The sudden attention—the feeling of eyes, raking over her like fingernails—is unexpected. There are far more people than she had thought; the table is full all the way down. Who are these people? She doesn’t recognize anyone here, and even if she did, she couldn’t tell them apart if she tried. They’re all dressed the same. Layered silks and high shoulders.

She thinks she can see Rakefine at the head, the picture of decorum. His hands are folded in his lap, and his gaze is intense.

For a moment, their eyes meet.

Sasha looks away.

Eldarion’s grasp tightens. She is smiling, just like always, but it is fixed as she leans into Sasha’s ear and whispers, “Remember what I’ve taught you. Chin up, eyes front.”

The words might be encouraging.

But Eldarion does not do “encouraging,” and to Sasha, they only sound like a threat.

She lifts her head. Rakefine is not looking at her anymore, and she isn’t sure if she should be grateful for this.

The dress itches.

Why didn’t she bring a dagger?

“Oh, we were worrying about the two of you!” someone says, breaking the silence. Their teeth are a blinding white and Sasha can’t even see their face with the shine of it. She doesn’t know who they are. Perhaps it’s better that way. “Did you get caught in the storm? What kept you?”

Here, Eldarion laughs, the sound like tinkling bells. “No, no,” she assures them. She pulls out a chair for Sasha, then herself. When Sasha does not move to sit, Eldarion inclines her head with a clear _hint_ and Sasha reluctantly seats herself. The tablecloth is long and gets caught on her legs when she tries to kick them. Retrieving her own chair beside Sasha, Eldarion turns to the rest of the company with a tepid smile. “No, it was nothing so devastating. We had a bit of a mix-up when it came to shoes, however. We completely misplaced them!”

“How awful,” another murmurs. “Did you sort it out?”

“Of course. We’re nothing if not resilient.” Eldarion meets Sasha’s eyes. Sasha had purposely loosened the knot in one of her shoes before they left, and looking at her now, she wonders if Eldarion knows this. The laces dangle on the floor. It feels like a crude victory. “We found a pair of lace-up boots that work, and the storm didn’t so much as touch us.” Her gaze sharpens. “Right, Sasha?”

But Sasha only stares at her. Her hair is still wet from the rain, the gooseflesh not gone from her arms. Surely they know. Surely they can see they’ve been out in the rain? 

Her fingers twitch. She wants a dagger. Everyone else is looking at them, she’s sure of that. Are Rakefine’s eyes on her, too, she wonders?

Why do Upper London people like _looking_ so much? Looking nice, looking up, never down—it’s stupid.

Sasha feels small.

But Eldarion’s grip does not slacken. Her grin is fixed. “Right, Sasha?” she repeats.

“Y-yes,” Sasha says, fumbling with the words. She stares at her hands. Eldarion will chastise her for that later, surely, because eye contact is so very vital, but Sasha cannot find it in herself to care. “I’ve been inside all day. The shoes are—they’re well good. I just can’t always tie them. I-I’m good with every other kinda knot, though. Just—just not shoelaces.”

And the hall erupts in laughter.

It is raucous, loud. The ladies cover their mouths with their hands and the gentlemen shake their heads with smiles. Even Eldarion’s lip curls, and Sasha feels like she should be smiling, too. She said something funny, didn’t she? You’re meant to smile at jokes. You’re meant to laugh.

But their laughter only makes her eyes burn. She ducks her head.

At last, Eldarion’s hand leaves Sasha’s shoulder, and even as she watches Eldarion’s fingers pick up a glass of wine and take a slow sip, Sasha can still feel their weight, pressing.

This time, she does not try to run away.

**Author's Note:**

> for those curious, eldarion says sasha's name a grand total of 13 times in this fic. wonderful!
> 
> also i know eldarion is a wizard and is all around a Magical Person but i just could not be bothered to check what spells she can use and pathfinder scares me so though i make no mention of magic, just know that she uses it as she does in canon. probably. idk lol
> 
> If you feel so inclined, leave a comment and let me know what you think! Thanks for reading! :D


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